


The Summer Sun and That Boy’s Look

by EntreNous



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Bittersweet, First Kiss, M/M, Reconciliation, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-06
Updated: 2004-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-26 14:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When Xander nods, some uncertainty mixed with curiosity on his face, Oz blinks back at him. It’s dark inside, and still Xander is this brightness. Oz forces himself to move first -- he can brush against Xander’s arm as he walks out the door as if he’s careless, like there’s not something burning between them."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Summer Sun and That Boy’s Look

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Oz/Xander ficathon, for a request of pre-“Graduation Day” setting, a Dingoes rehearsal, and no angst. I think I’ve managed to keep this away from angst and in the category of “bittersweet”.

It’s about noon on a Saturday, and after nosing around in the _Cultural Materialism_ and _Psychoanalysis_ sections, Oz stops mid-reach, his hand hovering over the middle shelf in _Travel Guides-- Asia_. He lets his arm fall before he can grasp _Lonely Planet: Jakarta_ , because somehow in one of the darker used bookstores in Sunnydale he’s ended up in a niche with a window, squinting as he transfers his sights from the dust-mote thick interior to the blinding bright day outside. 

There’s a boy standing in the middle of the street.

For a moment Oz’s sight grays around the edges, as it does when he scans down a bookcase and then shifts his eyes to the top shelf of the next one far too quickly. So to him it goes something like this: boy, bright, dim-bright-dim, bright, boy. Can’t be more than a moment, but he nearly stumbles back from the succession of still frames into which his mind translates the scene. It’s a stop and start of dark hair -- languid pose -- careless turn of head. Like this road belongs to that boy, his to travel on or halt any and all potential traffic from passing because he’s so very beautiful in the midday sun.

Then it really is noon, confirmed by the chime of church bells. 

Oz never wears a watch -- not just because he doesn’t feel like keeping time on his body but because with forty some odd churches in town there’s always a clang and a dong to let him know when he is. And at that moment the boy moves suddenly, set into motion by the echoing sounds, and Oz feels his heart ache when the picture in front of him dissolves into regular street, impatient vehicles, people without any brightness in them trudging along. 

He imagines he can see the shadows begin to form and lengthen, recasting themselves in the change of that second and the boy’s disappearance. All of a sudden it occurs to him -- summer. It’s a month away, but the quality of light as it moves through the air and the sharpness of the glare off the cars and the asphalt . . . Only in summer does he see sun like that. He closes his eyes for one beat, two.

Then an entirely different type of bell pings when the bookstore threshold creaks and trips the electric device signaling the admittance of another customer. The boy hasn’t disappeared at all, because here he is approaching Oz. Xander. 

“It’s you,” Oz says simply.

“This is me,” Xander agrees. His hair flops forward and he pushes it back with an impatient grin. He pauses, regards Oz intently, and there’s a glimmer in his eyes of the boy outside. 

Oz takes a step closer. “Don’t usually run into you here. Stocking up for summer reading? Or making that final push _To The Lighthouse_?

“ _Beowulf_ to Virginia Woolf,” Xander says morosely. “Who knew we could cover that much material in a year of English lit? And that it’d all be on the final exam?”

“Kind of the nature of the final exam right there,” Oz remarks.

“Yeah, well. Not in here for that stuff.” Xander waves at the books absently.

“What _are_ you here for?” Oz asks, and suddenly the answer seems very important.

“I thought I saw you in the window,” Xander says, and the half-smile he gives signals that he entered in trepidation, that it’s okay if Oz takes off right here and now because of what’s still there between the two of them and Willow.

“Yeah, I . . .” Oz doesn’t so much trail off as stop altogether. 

“That’s cool,” Xander says hastily. “You have things. And there are books. I can just go ahead and . . .”

“There are books,” Oz says with a slight quirk at the edge of his mouth, and somehow that makes Xander smile, sunshiny-bright dazzling even in the dank air of the shop. “Let’s get out of here,” he says suddenly.

“Let’s . . .” and Xander stops on that word, like the “us” that Oz just elided in the contraction pulls him up short. 

“Got a rehearsal,” Oz says by way of clarification. “You should come with.”

“Really?” Xander asks. The more Oz talks, the more Xander’s face opens up.

“Yeah. And . . . I’ve got something that I know you’d like.”

Xander almost chokes at this information. His hand involuntarily flies to the back of his head, and Oz almost grins when he realizes that they’re at this stage now. The thick perfume that’s Willow always lingering in the breathing space between them pretty much now fuels situation comedy.

“Not . . . it’s a book you might like.”

Xander’s eyes drift up and down Oz like he’ll find answers to his unspoken questions somewhere on Oz’s _Tonya’s Tacos!_ t-shirt or baggy cargo pants. 

“Okay,” he says guardedly. “I’ll come look at this book of yours. But if you tell me there’s going to be a quiz later, I’m going to have to . . . well, I’m going to have to take my score of zero and draw a smiley-face in it. With a stick-out-y tongue.”

“There should be no call for tongue,” Oz says easily. Knowing that Xander is coming lets Oz manage the smooth voice. 

When Xander nods, some uncertainty mixed with curiosity on his face, Oz blinks back at him. It’s dark inside, and still Xander is this brightness. Oz forces himself to move first -- he can brush against Xander’s arm as he walks out the door as if he’s careless, like there’s not something burning between them. 

* * *

“Hey,” Devon calls out when Xander comes into the garage on Oz’s heels and gives an awkward wave. 

“Xander’s just going to hang,” Oz says needlessly after Xander flops down on the dusty couch pushed into the corner. 

“Don’t mind me. Just go about your regularly-scheduled rockin’ out,” Xander says cheerfully with only a slight hitch of nervousness in his voice. 

Devon looks between Xander and Oz, Oz and Xander. “Okay then,” Devon shrugs, but his eyes go to Oz and the look in them is pointed.

The drummer arrives late like always, and there’s a brief confusion about the schedule this week because the bassist has a new part-time job. Devon spaces out while Oz pauses to scribble down the set list for Tuesday’s gig even though Devon’s the one who insisted they needed to settle the song order. But soon enough they’re playing and Oz nods at Xander when he sees him tapping his hands on his thighs in rhythm to the songs.

“Wow, you guys sound great -- totally on,” Xander says as soon as it’s clear that they’re done. He’s watching Oz, though Devon is the one who fields the compliment and promises to get Xander in free to a show anytime. Xander laughs, but kindly keeps quiet about the fact that he only sees the Dingoes at the Bronze, where the shows are always free. 

Oz rubs his hand along his neck as though the guitar strap itches, when really he’s trying to smooth out the shiver that rose up when he heard Xander’s laughter. 

Then there’s a heated debate about the merits of walking four blocks to get Lo Mein and Spicy Eggplant with Pork versus heading to the drive-through to bring back roast chicken and mashed potatoes. Devon solves the problem by ordering pizza, which arrives in the middle of a discussion about the merits of the cornbread at the chicken joint. 

After they eat Oz picks up his guitar again and Devon croons a little until the light peeking in under the garage door shines hazy and dim. The other guys get up and make motions of leaving. Oz doesn’t feel so rushed, but when Devon looks at Xander stretched out on the couch with his eyes closed, and grins at Oz, he decides that everyone else heading home seems like a good thing to encourage. 

The others are gone when Oz sits on the edge of the couch and rests his hand on Xander’s arm. “Hey, Xander . . . ” Oz whispers. 

Xander nods, heavy-lidded eyes struggling to open, and Oz draws his hand away when he realizes he’s begun to stroke up and down. 

“Okay,” Xander says for no reason at all. 

“Yeah,” Oz says quietly. “Hang on. Let me get your book.”

In his room Oz pokes around at his bookshelves, trailing a finger over spines of texts until he finds what he’s looking for. He turns to take the volume with him back to the garage, but finds Xander standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. 

Dark hair, languid pose, careless turn of head, and Oz barely stops to reflect that he registers dusk settling outside at the edges of his vision. Because he’s dropped the book and he’s kissing Xander hard.

Oz doesn’t expect anything in particular, but Xander freaking out wouldn’t surprise him. But sleep must have made him pliant, because he stands still without tension, soft lips parted but not quite yielding against Oz’s mouth. Then Xander’s hands move tentatively, palms resting on Oz’s cheeks, thumbs stroking jaw bone, before his fingers weave back and thread through Oz’s hair. There’s a quiet moan that passes back and forth between their lips, and when Oz’s eyes close he sees flashes of brightness behind the lids.

Then it’s over. 

“What was that for?” Xander asks. His fingers go to his lips and he laughs awkwardly.

Oz stands in front of him and regards him intently. He’s going to answer -- he means to answer, even if he doesn’t know precisely what the answer is -- but somehow instead he bends to pick up the dropped book and hands it to Xander.

“Jack Kerouac?” Xander reads the top line of the cover as a question. It’s an old copy -- he got it for 60 cents at the same used bookstore he was in today -- yellowed and a little brittle at the edges.

“Summer reading,” Oz says. “To be done before the summer.”

“Right,” Xander says slowly. He turns the book over to examine the back, raises it to his face, sniffs it curiously, and then looks up quickly into Oz’s eyes. “Thanks.” His smile is crooked and a little confused, but he appears relieved. As though this -- the day, the music, the kiss, the book -- is Oz’s way of telling Xander that things are alright between them. That they can go ahead and count themselves friends again. 

For a moment, Oz believes that’s what it is too.

Hours later he wakes up in a dark room, his clothes still on, his body flung sideways across his bed. Xander must have left, but he doesn’t remember seeing him go. In his muddled, groggy state, he can’t recall why Xander was even at his house today. But then face down on the soft mattress, he sees the sharp flash of Xander in the street at noon, and all at once he’s achingly awake with brightness around him. 

He turns onto his back and shifts under the heaviness of the silent room. And he thinks he gets what the kiss was for -- a chance for contact with that moment of summer sun and that boy’s look. But no -- could be he kissed Xander to remember the image, but now, alone on the bed, it seems to him more likely that he kissed Xander to keep something so vivid and burning at bay. 

It hasn’t worked, though. Because the more Oz lies there, blinking into the darkness, the more he sees Xander in his mind’s eye -- standing in the middle of the road, turning, shining.

**Author's Note:**

> At 12 o’clock in the afternoon  
> in the middle of the street --  
> Alexis.
> 
> Summer had all but brought the fruit  
> to its perilous end:  
> & the summer sun & that boy’s look
> 
> did their work on me.  
> Night hid the sun.  
> Your face consumes my dreams.
> 
> Others feel sleep as feathered rest;  
> mine but in flame refigures  
> your image lit in me. 
> 
> \- Meleager
> 
> _trans. Peter Whigham, Peter Jay_


End file.
